Operation Cyclone was the code name for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program to arm and finance the Afghan mujahideen in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1992, prior to and during the military intervention by the USSR in support of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. The mujahideen were also supported by Britain's MI6, who conducted their own separate covert actions. The program leaned heavily towards supporting militant Islamic groups, including groups with jihadist ties, that were favored by the regime of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in neighboring Pakistan, rather than other, less ideological Afghan resistance groups that had also been fighting the Soviet-oriented Democratic Republic of Afghanistan administration since before the Soviet intervention.
President Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen leaders in the Oval Office in 1983
A mujahideen resistance fighter shoots an SA-7, 1988.
Critics assert that funding the mujahideen played a role in causing the September 11 attacks.
The Afghan mujahideen (Pashto: افغان مجاهدين) were Islamist resistance militias that fought the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and the Soviet Union during the Soviet–Afghan War and the subsequent First Afghan Civil War.
Mujahideen rebels of the Yunus Khalis group, 1987
Amin Wardak, a mujahidin commander of Maidan Wardak Province
Mujahidin guerillas in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 1985
Various mujahidin weaponry seized by the Soviet army
